Job losses loom at more unis

The University of Sydney is not the only institution announcing redundancies and budget cuts. Victoria University, La Trobe, Macquarie and the University of NSW have all announced or are expected to announce cuts. Greens education spokeswoman Senator Lee Rhiannon said the cuts were a sign the federal government needed to be more generous in its funding of the sector. “Tertiary Education Minister Chris Evans needs to face up to the impact of squeezing university funding and forcing universities to rely on international student fees. Universities need the budget certainty of public funding so their annual forecasts do not swing widely with staff on the front line for cuts in a bad year,” she said. “Chronic underfunding has ushered in an era where university management are sharply focused on the bottom line to the detriment of quality education.” With budgets already tight at La Trobe, many staff are concerned that job cuts are on their way and the university has asked contract workers if they hope to renew next year. Victoria University will cut 30 TAFE staff, citing state budget cuts as the reason. An unknown number of positions in UNSW’s Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences are also understood to be at risk. Staff at Macquarie University are bracing for job losses in many departments. “They keep saying the budget is not finalised, but clearly the deans have an expectation of what will be required of them, and the sort of budget they are looking at,” said Cathy Rytmeister, the NTEU Macquarie branch president. She said in some cases, courses might lose tutorials along with staff. “They never talk about cutting budgets, they talk about requiring savings, but in some cases the savings are so large they can only equate to job losses.”

Job losses loom at more unis

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Head of Teaching & Learning | NAISDA

Australian Signals Directorate

Assistant Professor in Real Estate / Sustainability / Technology

Director of Research Centre for Resources Engineering towards Carbon Neutrality

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